Blood, Bullets, and Booze
by Chris Ganale
Summary: Rule Number 17. Always make sure they're dead. One man failed to follow this rule, and the balance of power completely changed for it. An angry courier, a vengeful sniper, and a firebrand caravaneer are out to make their mark on the Mojave Wasteland.
1. Prologue: Render Unto Caesar

_March 15, 2282  
__Deep Inside Legion Territory  
__1128 hours, Pacific Standard Time_

"Distance to target."

"One thousand thirty-seven meters, twenty-two-degree negative incline."

The midday Mojave Desert sun beat down into the pause left in the wake of that statement. Three figures occupied a ridgeline overlooking a forward-operating Legion camp near the Arizona-Nevada border. Two laid prone against the warm rocks, one manning the absurdly-deadly Barret M95, the other observing the camp through a harmless spotter scope. The third figure sat against the backside of the hill a few feet down and away from the sniper team, covering against enemy attack.

"Got him," the sniper remarked, focusing the rifle's scope on the bald figure of the supreme commander of Caesar's Legion, Caesar himself. Currently, said leader was lounging atop his throne, a look of amusement on his face as he observed some entertainment that was outside the scope's field of vision. "Smug prick. This day has been long in coming."

"Steady," the spotter replied. "We have to wait until the other sniper teams have their targets. We can't blow it now."

The operation currently taking place, dubbed Operation: UPPERCUT, was one of the most ambitious ones undertaken by the New California Republic in recent memory. Following the rout of the Legion during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, which saw the death of Lanius, Caesar's top field commander, General Lee Oliver, NCR field commander, determined that it was time to finally take the head from the snake once and for all.

Unfortunately, it was not so simple as merely assassinating Caesar, as NCR Intelligence had long known that the clever bastard had set up a path of succession for the Legion should he die. Thus, Operation: UPPERCUT and its two phases. The first phase had been careful intelligence gathering, finding out how many individuals made up the line of succession, and who and where they were. This alone had taken many months. But with that complete, the second phase had begun. Elite sniper teams had been dispatched to track down each successor as well as Caesar himself. In order to ensure that the Legion's head would be neatly severed, the strikes would be simultaneous. No one assassination would trigger a warning that would allow others to escape to safety. No, all would die at once.

"I've waited two years," the sniper murmured, his breath slowing, preparing himself for the moment. "A few more minutes won't bother me."

Still watching his scope, the spotter nodded slightly. "Good. Rose, call it in."

Down the hill, Rose of Sharon Cassidy, known to most everyone as Cass, nodded without turning away from her observations of the surroundings, and spoke into the radio built into her armor helmet, "CENTCOM, Arclight Two is in position, target has been marked, standing by for confirmation."

"_Roger, Arclight Two,"_ the NCR radio operator back at Camp McCarran answered. _"Remain on station and stand by, await confirmation that the other teams are in position."_

"Copy, CENTCOM, Arclight Two standing by, out." Settling herself more comfortably against the rock she sat upon, she kept one eye on the motion-detecting screen they carried to protect against unwanted visitors, her antique M1 Garand rifle resting ready in her lap. She'd balked a little the first time she'd been handed the weapon and a box of .30-06 ammunition for it by the man known across practically the entire Mojave as 'The Courier,' but she'd grown fond of it over time, and now it was her most cherished weapon, in part because of how efficient she was with it, in part because it was he who had given it to her.

That very courier continued to observe the camp, making notes on a scratchpad beside his spotter scope. "God, I love how stupid the Legion is. All their banners and flags make it so easy to calculate windage." He paused, the scratching of a pencil barely heard over the desert wind. "Okay, we're looking at two knots out of the southwest. Humidity, as usual, is exactly dick."

"Gonna be hard to stay on top of that wind, the way it keeps changing off the mountains," the sniper said.

"Yeah, we're going to have to play it right up to the moment of truth. Should be fine, though. We've done tougher shots. Just don't get emotional."

"You of all people know me better than that, Kain."

Mark Kain smirked. "I'm surprised you haven't started executing the entire camp, Boone."

From below, Cass laughed, "Might be because we only gave him one bullet."

"One's all I need," Craig Boone groused, tapping his shooting finger against the trigger housing of the weapon.

No one responded to that, and so several minutes passed in silence as the trio tended to their assigned tasks. Somewhere overhead, a bird screeched in flight, and the droning buzz of insects fell silent, only to resume once the bird had passed. Down below, the entertainment for Caesar came to an end, and now it seemed they were on to business, as one of his top officers was making some sort of grand oration in the center of Caesar's audience, complete with theatrical gesturing and haughty stances. They watched in silence as about twenty Legion troops were paraded out, a lottery cast, and the two unlucky 'winners' forced to double-execute one another while the remainder watched.

Boone sighed, refraining from shaking his head only to maintain his sighting. "Animals."

"Beat me to it," Mark muttered.

Their helmet radios crackled with static, indicative of an incoming transmission. Boone waited patiently; Mark felt his stomach clench in anticipation. _"CENTCOM to all field units. All forces are in place. Commence Operation: UPPERCUT at your discretion. I say again, Operation: UPPERCUT is a go."_

All banter and silliness disappeared. It was time to get deadly serious. Mark took a moment to do some more calculations. "Winds shifted. Four knots, south-southeast. Humidity still blank. Acquire target."

Calmly and efficiently, Boone adjusted the position of his sight to account for the wind speed and direction, feeling a cold sensation run through his body as his senses heightened in preparation for the culmination of years of his life fighting against the damned Legion. Settling his finger lightly on the trigger, he said, "Target acquired."

The courier-turned-spotter made one final check, then nodded. "Take."

Beside him, the sound of Boone's exhaled breath was impossibly loud, and then he went still as a stone monument. The NCR sniper closed one eye, and slowly drew back his finger.

Thunder echoed across the hills as the weapon bucked, kicking up a small cloud of dust around the barrel from the recoil gasses. The shot was off, heading toward its fatal rendezvous with Caesar's head.

Through the spotter scope, Mark watched as Caesar's goons began to react to the distant sound of the shot, but it was too little, too late. Without warning, Caesar's head burst like an overripe tomato, showering blood and skull fragments upon the tent canvas behind where the dictator had sat. The body fell from its throne, and the legionnaires were nothing if not quick on the uptake, already beginning to get up in arms.

"_Damn_ good shot!" Mark called as he grabbed his pad and scope and pushed himself backwards from the crest of the hill. "Blew his damn head clean off. Now let's blow this joint!"

Boone had likewise grabbed the sniper rifle, not bothering to eject the spent brass, and shoved himself backwards as well. Below them, Cass was already on her feet at the base of their rocky outcrop, weapon in hand and scanning their surroundings for hostiles. "Beware the Ides of March, fucker," Boone uttered darkly as he slung the heavy sniper over his back, replacing it with a much more wieldy M4A1 scoped special operations rifle.

Cass tossed a similar rifle, this one colored with a woodland camouflage scheme, to Mark, then led the way back toward their extraction point. "Boomer One-One, Arclight Two," she spoke into her radio. "Objective complete, on the path to extraction point Alpha."

"_Copy, Arclight Two, we are two minutes out. We'll leave the light on for you."_

As the trio ran toward where the transport would pick them up, the shouts and exclamations of the Legion camp rose from the valley, chased by the howls of their war dogs, which may or may not have picked up their trail. They hadn't been able to position themselves fully downwind of the camp.

Clearing a rock formation, with the extraction point in sight, a bullet struck Cass in midstride, clanging from her helmet with an off-key thwack and knocking the former caravaner off her feet. She hit the ground limply, her rifle clattering into the dust.

"Rose!" Mark shouted, skidding to his knees beside her as Boone turned to face the threat, spotting a Legion war party approaching them from two hundred meters away. Boone's rifle chattered as Mark rolled Cass onto her back, a cold sweat dousing his body beneath the heavy Ranger armor. Her armored helmet was dented in heavily by the bullet, but didn't appear to have failed.

"_Fuck_!" Cass yelled, hands coming up to grab the side of her head. "Anybody get the number of that super mutant?"

"Rose, are you shot?" the courier demanded, grabbing her shoulders. The rattle of Boone's rifle and the hissing and snaps of incoming fire were at the far edge of his perception, all his attention focused on her condition.

The redhead sat up slowly, shaking her head, then groaned. "Oww… No, helmet took all of it. God, this is going to hurt later…" She rolled onto her knees, grabbing her M1 out of the dust and moving to stand, but a wave of dizziness washed over her, and she would've collapsed if not for Mark grabbing her and keeping her upright.

"Hang on, Rose, we're getting out of here," he murmured to her, pulling her right arm over his shoulder and leaning her against him, then moving toward cover as Boone continued to fire.

Once he had pulled her behind another rocky outcrop, he spoke into his radio, "Boomer One-One, Arclight One! We've been engaged heavily by Legion forces. Extraction point Alpha is a bust, moving for Bravo! We're going to need support!"

Boone fell back into the cover of the rock as Mark pulled Cass onward, dropping the expended magazine from his rifle and quickly reloading it, then pulling a fragmentation mine from his pack, arming it, and dropping it at his feet as he moved backward to cover his comrades' retreat.

"_Copy, Arclight One. Boomer One-One and One-Two on approach, hot. Mark enemy positions and we'll take 'em out for you."_

Moving like a man possessed, almost unhindered by supporting most of Cass' weight, Mark called back over his shoulder, "How many?"

"About twenty," Boone answered calmly, watching the ridges above them for any sign of ambush. "Took three down, the rest should be more cautious."

Ahead, a clearing between two high ridgelines marked the secondary extraction point. Boone pushed ahead of his comrades and dashed out into the clearing, deliberately exposing himself to see if the enemy had baited a trap. Seeing nothing, and confirming this with his motion-detection screen, he dashed back to Mark and Cass, retaking position behind them to face where there were known enemies.

Back in the direction they'd come, an explosion marked that they'd discovered the present he left, which only resulted in more shouting and exclamations, amplified by the natural channels of the ridges until it sounded as though the entire vengeful army of Caesar was coming down on their heads. The explosive surprise apparently didn't deter them much, as not moments later a crimson-armored trooper made a corner and got a 5.56mm hollow-point round to the face for his troubles.

Boone flicked the fire selector of his weapon to automatic, forgoing the highly-accurate ACOG sight in favor of the ability to suppress as more followed, and he sprayed fire at them, keeping his bursts short and concentrated. Return fire hammered the rock walls around him, a few shots even pinging off his armor, but it seemed to be mostly pistol rounds, nothing with enough power or penetration to defeat his armor.

Mark pulled Cass out into the extraction point, heading directly for a low rock outcrop that would at least provide some cover. Neither of them had any doubts that soon the ridges around them would be filled with Caesar's men, and if the extraction didn't get here soon, there'd be nothing left to extract. He laid Cass down behind the rock and handed her her M1, then took a knee beside her and watched the ridgeline. A barrage of bullets heralded Boone bursting out into the clearing, where he tossed a smoke canister behind him and made for their rock.

"Boomer One-One, I've popped red smoke north of our position!" he called out as he ran. "Stand by to engage on my mark!"

Over the clatter of gunfire, and as they began to see white helmets peek over the ridge before them, they could hear the faint sound of rotary drive engines as Boomer One-One answered, _"Roger that, I have a visual on the red smoke. Standing by."_

Dropping to his knees, Boone slid the rest of the way to where Mark and Cass waited, flipping the selector back to semi-automatic and picking off targets. Fire from the Legion kicked up rock chips and glanced off their armor, every shot wearing down the protection offered by their plates. "Boomer One-One, cleared hot!"

"_Roger that, cleared hot."_ The whine of spinning barrels drowned out the proclamation, _"Guns, guns, guns."_

A great thunderous cacophony of fully-automatic fire filled the clearing as a vertibird bearing the upswept blue wings design of the Boomers descended into position, the twin miniguns grafted to the sides of the troop bay unleashing devastation on the enemy troops. The rotary aircraft descended into a hover less than twenty feet over the beleaguered soldiers, a guardian angel of death protecting its charges. At a rate of thousands of rounds per minute, the 5mm armor-piercing slugs chewed up Legion soldier, cloth-plate armor, and rock formations with equal ferocity, adding a fine red mist to the red smoke used to mark the enemy's positions.

Behind them, a second vertibird with the same insignia descended down to the canyon floor, keeping its chin turret facing the enemy positions, as well as the two door gunners adding their suppressive fire up toward the ridges to cover the extraction. _"Let's go, let's go!"_ the pilot urged. _"This whole damn valley is about to come down on our heads!"_

Boone was the first up, continuing to fire on any Legion troops that exposed themselves as he walked backwards toward the transport. After him, Mark helped Cass to her feet, but the redhead pushed the courier forward, signaling that she could now move on her own power. Nodding, he turned toward the vertibird, tapping Boone on the shoulder as he passed, and all three of them ran toward their getaway vehicle.

First aboard, Boone moved across the bay and took the seat furthest from the entry door to allow the others to quickly board. Mark jumped in and took the seat adjacent to Boone, turning back to face the outside just in time to watch Cass tumble forward, the report of a sniper's shot drowned by the roar of miniguns. The former caravaner slammed chest-first into the edge of the troop bay.

"No!" Mark screamed, grabbing Cass' arms to keep her from falling to the ground. He leaned forward and gripped the belt of her armor, in the process spotting the angry hole punched through her armor low on her back, left of her spine and just above her waistline.

Boone grabbed Mark and applied leverage to help him pull Cass into the transport. "Take us up, pilot! Get us back to the nearest base! Arclight Two is hit! Have med teams on standby!"

Not wasting time with a response, the vertibird pilot immediately gained altitude, passing the gunship vertibird as it continued to rain death, and now retribution, onto the hapless Legion soldiers, powerless to penetrate the gunship's armor. The vertibird's engines screamed as the craft rocketed skyward, Cass' form held aboard only by Mark's grip on her belt, her legs dangling free in the sky.


	2. Chapter 1: From the Beginning

_When one is a wasteland courier, there are a number of rules they should live by. The two most important ones are rules 17 and 35. Rule number seventeen: Always make sure they're dead. Rule number thirty-five: That which does not kill you has made a tactical error. In the wasteland, when you kill something, you better make damn sure that you put a few extra bullets into a vital organ, or ascertain that an important limb, namely the head, is no longer attached to the rest of your target. Only then can it be considered dead. And even then, I'd put another round in the brain bucket, just to be sure._

_One man failed both rules. As a courier for the Mojave Express, I'd been hired to deliver a package containing a special platinum poker chip to the Lucky 38 casino in New Vegas. Just outside of the town of Goodsprings in what used to be the California/Nevada border region, a man in a checkered suit along with two Great Khans thugs ambushed me, stole the parcel, and then the snake in that suit shot me in the head and buried me in a shallow grave. He wasn't smart enough to wait until I'd stopped twitching, or personally ensure it himself._

_Shortly thereafter, a Securitron droid going by the name of Victor, with the personality of an old west cowboy, dug me out of the grave and brought me to the house of Doc Mitchell, an aging surgeon who formerly lived in Vault 21, but currently resided in Goodsprings. He did a damn fine job of bringing me back to life and getting those bullets out of my head, and got me started on the path of tracking down the rat bastard that shot me. In gratitude, I stuck around and helped the town with some minor gecko problems, and then helped them get organized to kick out a roving band of escaped convicts from the nearby New California Republic correctional facility calling themselves the 'Powder Gangers' that were trying to cause trouble in the town. After that, I was off like a bloodhound on the scent of my would-be killer._

_That bastard in the checkered suit didn't do too great a job of killing me, and that was a tactical error. Now I'm out for his blood, and I intend to fully adhere to Rule 17 when I catch up to him._

_Primm was my next stop, a little nothing town that was probably what Goodsprings would've ended up looking like had I not done my part in organizing the locals to apply boot to convict ass. The Powder Gangers owned Primm, having killed the sheriff and taken the deputy hostage. The residents that were still alive had taken up residence in the Vikki and Vance casino, armed to the teeth and ready for the bitter siege from the Gangers, who seemed content to let them have the casino. I talked to Johnathan Nash in there, a crusty old guy who ran the Mojave Express branch in Primm. He told me they headed on down to Nipton._

_Once more, I did a little something for these folks out of gratitude for their help. There were maybe twenty convicts in the Bison Steve casino across the street, nothing that a little stealth ninja action and a steady aim couldn't fix. Freed that good-for-nothing deputy, who then wanted me to turn around and find a new sheriff for Primm. Considering that _he_ would have been sheriff otherwise, I determined it a worthwhile expenditure of my time. Fortunately, that didn't take long to handle; all I had to do was reprogram the Protectron droid in the casino to act as the town sheriff; he already had the western programming going for him._

_With that complete, it was on down the road again, south to Nipton. Imagine my surprise to get there and find it ransacked by those red-armored slaver morons known as Caesar's Legion. The morons fancy themselves to be a new-age reboot of the two thousand year-dead Roman Empire, but they're really a grabasstic assortment of power-hungry vermin intent on enslaving the entire West Coast. About the only thing they have going for them is they at least know their Latin. Or at least, I assume they do. I don't speak it, but the crap they spout sounds good enough for me. Frankly I spend more time shooting them than listening to them prattle on._

_Some Legion blowhard name of Vulpes Incanto or some crap like that had caught Nipton in a trap. Now, mind you, Nipton was a wretched hive of scum and villainy anyway, catering to the NCR, Legion, and the convicts, and full of whores and the like, and the mayor was as corrupt as the day was long. So all in all, nobody's going to shed a tear over Nipton's burning, but the Legion were some bastards about it._

_So this Vulpes fellow sent the mayor a discreet message about setting a trap for the NCR and the convicts. The trap was set, and then a Legion hit-squad rolled in and wiped out the lot of them. They held a cruel lottery. First place winner got to go free. Second place winner lived, but they crippled the bastard. First place losers, plural, were decapitated. Quick and easy deaths. Second place losers were enslaved. The rest were strung up on crosses and left to die. They burned the mayor alive on a tire burn._

_So I came strolling into Nipton nearly dead from a bad run-in with a large gang of Viper gunslingers west of town. That Vulpes bastard, seeing how obvious it was that I was in no position to pick a fight, got all up on his high horse, smug and cocky, and started gloating about what they did, then said that they would 'spare' me so I could spread the word about what they'd done. Spare me, nothing. Sure, I'd have been dead, but I damn sure would've taken that smug snake with me, and at least half of his goons as well._

_They took off after that, and I limped my way on down the road, crossing into Nevada and making my way on up north. It was pretty rough going, as beat up as I was, but I managed not to die, creeping along and taking out anything threatening at extreme range with the varmint rifle I'd gotten in Goodsprings. A 'doctor' in the town of Novac name of Ada Straus patched me up good, and I was back in business. Curious how a 'doctor' would need two heavily-armed mercenary escorts. But she did the fixing job well enough so I could really care less about her traditional, or her almost-certainly-shady background._

_A fellow named Manny Vargas said he knew who shot me and could point me in his direction, but only if I would help out Novac by clearing out a ghoul problem in the nearby REPCONN rocket testing site. With little other choice, I agreed, and set out. Found out the place was occupied by a bunch of ghouls who'd lost their marbles, and not in the feral direction. They were convinced that they were a 'chosen people' destined to go on a 'Great Journey' deemed by their gods. Right there, I almost started shooting._

_You see, me, I'm what you would call a connoisseur of Pre-War audio-visual entertainment, known in layman's terms as video games. One of my favorite game series was called '_Halo_,' and it was about a war between humans and a group of aliens known as the Covenant, whose primary goal was to go on a 'Great Journey' that was really nothing more than genocide on a galactic scale. So naturally, when that demented ghoul uttered the exact words 'Great Journey' at me, I very nearly punched him in the eye then and there. But I refrained, and cooperated._

_This initiated a series of fetch quests that involved me going down to the basement to clear out an 'invisible demon' problem. The radiation clearly was melting their brains at a prodigious rate, as I got down there and quickly realized their 'demons' were Nightkin. Simple to dispatch. Shotguns in close-quarters are wonderful things, particularly with 20-gauge slug involved._

_So I kill a few of them, talk to their leader, who didn't suspect a thing, come to find out they chased the ghouls upstairs to find an order of a gross of stealth boys that apparently had been shipped here before the War. He then tells me that there's somebody in a room down the hall who's absurdly efficient at killing Nightkin, thus sending me on _another_ fetch quest. So I go to see the ghoul in question, who will agree to stop killing the Nightkin and leave if I go check on a 'friend' of his who was stuck down there with him. Cue the facepalm. So I went and fetched _again_, came back and told him his broad was dead, then explored the room and its terminals only to find that the stealth boys the Nightkin had come after had been sent back, also before the War. I'd really had enough of the bullshit at that point. The next Nightkin to come around a corner at me got its face exploded, loudly and messily._

_When I went back to inform their leader, apparently he heard me making meat paste of his kin, and came after me with a big fucking sword made from a car bumper. I proceeded to teach him something I learned from those old _Halo_ games: shotgun beats sword. I looted the sword and went on my way._

_Telling the ghouls that the coast was clear, they booked it down to the sub-basement, where the launch pad for the test rockets was at. Now they wanted me to help them launch this 'Great Journey.' I interpreted that as exactly what it was: more fucking fetch quests. Go find stabilizer control parts or some shit. Go find highly-radioactive isotope fuels. By the time I found all that shit and brought it back, I was in the mood for some serious violence. Lucky for them they were already all sequestered away down on the launch pad._

_Heading up to a launch viewing area, I found a terminal where I could adjust the rockets' course on takeoff. I noticed that I could program the rockets to crash into each other after lifting off. You can see where I'm going with this._

_It felt very gratifying. Enjoy your 'Great Journey,' alien basterds._

_With all that shit done, and my desire for violence abated, I went back to Novac to report my success. He told me the bastard in the suit was named Benny, and that he and the Khans were headed for Boulder City. In the process, he decided to bitch and whine about his sniper shift partner, a fella name of Craig Boone, and the fact that his absent wife was apparently a deadbeat, and that Boone was better off without her, and that the guy was all depressed and shit now._

_Well of course he'd be depressed, you ignorant fuck, as I informed him. The man's wife was gone, or dead, or whatever. He wasn't clear on that. Hell, I'd been there. I knew what it was like. Not with a wife, as she bailed on me before I could ask her to get married, but straight down to brass tacks, it works out better for me that I hadn't married her. Two-timing bitch._

_I digress._

_So on a whim, I went to talk to Boone about it. Besides, he was a sniper, and I liked sniping. I always liked to compare notes with fellow snipers. Upon realizing I was a stranger, he decided to ask me for help. He told me his wife, Carla, had been kidnapped by Legion while he was on shift. What was unusual was that they'd known how to approach the town so as not to get their heads introduced to .308 Winchester, and they'd _only_ taken her. It smacked of an inside job to him, and he wanted me to investigate because he figured that I, being an outsider, would have no reason to fuck him over._

_And hey, I had no love for the Legion either, so I decided to help a brother out. After a few lines of interrogation and some snooping around, I come to find that the hotel owner, Jeannie May Crawford, had brokered a deal with the Legion to sell Carla into slavery. What made it worse, and sealed the bitch's fate, was that the deal had been made with all parties knowing that Carla had been pregnant and with a special bonus for the unborn child._

_Good fucking God, having read that I gained a new respect for Boone. The guy's wife and unborn kid were gone, and he was still here doing his duty. Had it been me, I'd have been tearing ass across the countryside on a roaring rampage of revenge. There wouldn't have been a Legion left. Family is the key most important thing with me. Rule number three of wasteland courier life: He who fucks with your family has forfeited his life._

_So I told the bitch that there was something out there in front of the dinosaur for her to look at, and she believed me like a naïve child and followed me out into Boone's line of sight, where I put on that signaling beret with a smile and watched half of her head explode with one well-placed shot. I went back to Boone and gave him back his beret and the sales paperwork that I'd found, and told him in no uncertain words that I had a lot of respect for his restraint in not going off to kill everything he saw in the name of revenge for his family. He seemed at a loss for not only words but direction as well, so I offered him to tag along with me. He recognized in me a fellow hater of the Legion, and agreed, knowing that he'd find ample opportunity to perform exploratory cranial ventilation surgery on hapless Legion bastards by following me around. Heh. 'Cranial ventilation surgery.' I like that one. Boone came up with that. He's got a knack for awesome euphemisms. Like 'hiking with an extreme prejudice.' That one's good. We do it a lot._

_That notwithstanding, Boone and I headed off north toward Boulder City. We get there to find that there's a hostage situation going between the NCR and the very Khans that left me for dead. I cruise straight in, scare the everloving shit out of the Khans with my very presence, and they happily hand over the knowledge that Benny runs the Tops casino in New Vegas and retreated back there after he stiffed them their payment for the heist. Apparently they decided taking NCR troopers hostage was a good backup plan._

_Playing off the holy shit quotient they were overloaded on with me still being alive, and seeming more scared of Boone than even me, it was easy to talk them into letting the hostages go in exchange for an NCR escort back to their home territory. The NCR officer was initially glad of the situation defusal, but apparently got orders while I was in there to take out the Khans anyway. I reminded him that he was not only an officer, but a _gentleman_ as well, and he took my words to heart and upheld the honor of the bargain I struck._

_With that taken care of, Boone and I continued on toward New Vegas, skirting the edge of Lake Mead and passing through Camp Golf, belonging to the NCR, on the way. We get to the outskirts of old Las Vegas, and enter into the outer city, known as Freeside. I figured that one could not simply waltz into New Vegas, so I started asking around in the various casinos and shops for any odd jobs that mine earn me some cash and street cred. Did some debt collecting for the Atomic Wrangler casino, some prostitute recruiting, and a promise to kill a guy named McCafferty inside New Vegas once I got there. Admittedly, the only reason I went into the Wrangler to begin with was because it was supposed to have hookers and I was feeling a bit anxious, but I surely couldn't find any hookers in there._

_Down the street from the Wrangler was the Silver Rush. It wasn't a casino anymore, now it was an energy weapon store owned by the Van Graff family. Me and Boone got started off on a low-key job for them, being a door guard. Wasn't so bad, really. Reminded me a bit of my four-year stint as a grunt trooper in the NCR. Door guard was practically all I did back in the day. Next after that, they had me deliver a weapon shipment to some fidgety guy out in the wastes. Nothing big there. Next, the big brother of the Van Graff family wanted me to go track down some caravaner named Cassidy and bring them back to him. He was evasive when questioned, but neither Boone nor I were anyone's fools; we knew this guy was going to give that Cassidy fellow a permanent dirt nap._

_But hey, that was a problem for that Cassidy kid, not us. We were directed to go talk to Alice McLafferty from the Crimson Caravan for some additional information. That yielded a request from McLafferty to offer Cassidy a contract to buy out the Cassidy Caravan. These guys really had it out for this kid; the Crimson Caravan wanted him to sell his lifeblood and the Van Graffs wanted him dead. What the hell did he do to them?_

_Either way, we were told that he was hanging out in the Mojave Outpost, way down at the southwest corner of the Mojave. That was a hell of a walk back all the way across the desert, but we made it, with no complaints, just putting one foot in front of the other. Before a week was out, we got back out to the outpost, where a Ranger wanted us to go check out what happened to Nipton. We informed her that the Legion razed it, then decided we may as well find out what else we could do for our troubles while we were there. A head Ranger name of Jackson slipped us an old-school wooden-stock M16 for our efforts in clearing the roads for caravan travel as well as some caps and weapon repair kits. The M16 beat out the varmint rifle I'd been using, even though it was only semiautomatic, so I pawned off the varmint rifle to one of the caravaners in the outpost and got directions to find Cassidy inside the bar in the barracks._

_Boone's told me that something in me changed the second I pushed open that door. I'm inclined to agree with him. Before we went into that bar, all I gave a shit about was settling my own score with Benny and helping out Boone with his roaring rampage of revenge because he was a cool guy, damned good with that hunting sniper, and had saved my ass a few times on the way to New Vegas and back. But that day in the bar changed me, made me go from a walking automaton ex-courier to the Mark Kain I'd once been and had lost somewhere along the way, a man with a sense of justice, honor, and compassion._

_That's where our story begins, ladies and gentlemen._


End file.
